Deduplicated data stores provide efficient means for storing data. For example, if two users both save a copy of the same file, the deduplicated data store may only store one copy of the file in its memory and provide references to the single copy to both users. The deduplicated data store may retain the single copy of the file's data as long as at least one user retains a reference to it. Deduplicated data stores may be particularly efficient in network environments where many users may attempt to store copies of the same data. The deduplicated data store may divide files and other data into data blocks or other chunks of data for the purpose of detecting, preventing, or removing duplicate files from the data store.
Additionally, deduplicated data stores may be duplicated, replicated, backed up, restored, or otherwise copied to a deduplicated data store at another location. Conventional duplication technologies may copy the data at the original (source) deduplicated data store to the new (target) deduplicated data store before the data may be accessed at the target data store. Consequently, it may be a time consuming process to copy the data that is not yet present at the target. For example, if a virtual machine image is stored on a backup disk on the network, a user may need to wait a long time for a copy of the image to become available.
In view of the foregoing, it may be understood that there may be significant problems and shortcomings associated with conventional technologies for duplicating deduplicated data stores.